Marcus Wareing has today revealed plans to open a new London restaurant next year and spoken candidly about his former mentor, Gordon Ramsay's recent relaunch of Petrus. Speaking this morning at the Park Lane Hilton the chef said that he was "looking for the next thing" but emphasised that he will be staying at his eponymous restaurant in the Berkeley Hotel.

"The key thing for me is I'm not going to leave the Berkeley," he said. "I'm going to do what a lot of chefs have never done, which is to open other restaurants but stay in the one house. So you can continue coming to the Berkeley and you'll see me cooking there, but what I have got is a fabulous infrastructure to be able to move people on to the next step of their career, and invest in them."

The chef, who famously split from Gordon Ramsay Holdings two years ago, leaving Petrus where he had worked for 10 years and earned two Michelin stars, also spoke about Ramsay's recent relaunch of the restaurant. When asked what impact he thought the new incarnation would have on the dining scene, he said: "None. None. The reviews say it all.

"I don't think it's going to have any impact whatsoever on the industry because it's been done," he continued. "I ran Petrus - I pretty much put the concept together, and OK, this is not the old Petrus, this is the new Petrus, so let's see what it is. Again it goes back to that question 'what does it become?' - Petrus used to stand in a deluxe five star hotel in Knightsbridge, now it's on a back street in a new building. The best word people have used to describe it is 'beige' - it's beige. If you really want to go and eat at Petrus, come to the Berkeley, because that's where it really is."

Wareing said that anyone setting up a fine dining restaurant at the moment would suffer because it isn't "what the world wants right now", although he claimed his own restaurant was different having been established for 13 years.

The chef insisted he hadn't been paying Ramsay's restaurant much attention, but acknowledged "it's around the corner and it's in my eye-line. Petrus is just a name - so what? You're not eating the name. To me it's irrelevant to what is inside." He went on to say that he was more concerned with competition from the likes of Heston Blumenthal, Daniel Boulud and Pierre Koffmann who are all opening new restaurants in the location.

"I think what's going to happen in an environment when you've got Daniel who's just opened and Heston at the Mandarin and Koffmann who's opening in six weeks, is that they're going to eclipse any other small eatery in the area because they're going to offer so much more. There's going to be pressure, and we're all going to be edging for the same clients, but I'm excited about it - pressure's good and competition is healthy - and only the fittest will survive."

Wareing said that his next venture will, in keeping with the current trend for more laid-back dining, be a more relaxed operation. "I'd be looking for something more relaxed and much bigger - it would be in the middle of something like the the Wolseley and Scotts. A big venue, great food, buzzing atmosphere in an iconic place - something that people want to go and enjoy. Somewhere with a good bar with nice cocktails, where you can be as loud as you want to be, sit down and have a good meal and walk away thinking, 'that was great value for money'." That will, he says, happen next year in London.